RajivBuzz

  The makers of Gujarati film “Hellaro” are back with a bang. Four years on, they are all set to release their second feature film, “Kamthan”, on February 2, 2024. “Kamthan” is based on popular Gujarati writer Ashwini Bhatt’s last of dozen-odd Gujarati novels, also called “Kamthan”. It revolves around the mess created by a thief,  belonging to  a denotified tribe -- a community traditionally identified in the so-called civilised world as consisting of criminals.

India has 2,43,237 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) cases pending in its Fast Track Special Courts (FTSCs) till January 31, 2023, despite Central Government’s robust policy and financial commitment. Moreover, even if no new case is added to this long list, the country will need at least nine years to clear this backlog, says a new study.

At a time when the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s (CMIE's) report claims an upward trend in employment in India’s labour market with 15 million people entering the workforce, senior economists have sought to expose the claim by stating that a fall in unemployment is not equal to a rise in employment. 

  The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad's (IIM-A's) latest round of Business Inflation Expectations Survey (BIES) has found that sales and profit margins of Indian businesses have remained subdued despite  tall claims  by the Government of India (GoI) that the Indian economy doing well even as world is going in wrong direction.

Recently, reputed Gujarati journal "Sarthak Jalso", edited by well known writer Urvish Kothari, published an article by Shruti Shah. I posted its pdf version, sent to me by Urvishbhai, on a blog Shruti and I run:  https://saankal.blogspot.com/ .   The article is about our seven year long stay in the former Soviet Union during the turbulent period that led to the collapse of the Communist rule -- 1986-93. I thought Gujarati readers would be interested in reading the article, hence I posted a link of the blog post on Facebook. Prompt came Facebook's reply: the link violates it's community standards, so I should withdraw the article or send my objection. I sent objection, but nothing happened!  I don't understand which community standards was the Facebook referring to. The link carried snapshots of cover of "Sarthak Jalso" and first page of Shruti's article.  The cover has photograph of two towering mountain edges very close to each other and a person, ...

I was much amused to read the "visual story" about Reliance World Plaza put open in Mumbai. Top celebrities of Bollywood participated in the event. Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani, Nita Ambani, others must be feeling great about it. The event ironically took place a day after I visited ISCON mega mall in Ahmedabad. The mall, to put it mildly, is in tatters. Yes, it too is part of Reliance framework. It used to have some of the big names quoted in the Reliance World Plaza Mall visual story. Once a throbbing attraction of Amdavadis, the ISCON mall's 70% shops are closed. Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has sealed several of the high profile shops of the Ahmedabad mall for failing to deposit tax. Even elevators and lifts are not working, hence senior citizens have to climb up on stairs, which are dirty. Its passages are dark, as there are no lights there. ISCON mall used to have an excellent food court, a bakery shop. Nothing of it exists now. Do Muk...

A high-profile American Bar Association (ABA) report, prepared by its Center for Human Rights, which claims to mobilize lawyers to defend threatened advocates, protect vulnerable communities, and hold governments accountable under law, has accused the Government of India of misusing counter-terrorism financing legislations in order to targets non-profit organizations (NPOs) and human rights defenders.

  Urgewald, a German environment and human rights NGO, which claims to be working for establishing strong environmental and social standards for the international finance industry, has called India "the number one hotspot of the coal mining boom" in the world. It states this in a report "The 2023 Global Coal Exit List (GCEL): Failing the Phase-Out", prepared by Urgewald and more than 40 NGO partners, seeking to offer in-depth information on over 1,433 companies operating worldwide along the thermal coal value chain.

  In a significant move, Commissioners on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) have raised concerns about the “sophisticated, systematic persecution” of religious minorities by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a hearing on India in Washington DC.

A  new report  released by two global NGOs, BankTrack and the Toxic Bonds Network, has claimed to have come up with “a disquieting truth”: that Barclays, a financial heavyweight with a “controversial” track record, is deeply entrenched in a “disturbing” alliance with “the Indian conglomerate and coal miner Adani Group.”

A new  report , “The Junk Push: Rising Consumption of Ultra-processed foods in India- Policy, Politics and Reality”, public health experts, consumers groups, lawyers, youth and patient groups, has called upon the Government of India to check the soaring consumption of High Fat Sugar or Salt (HFSS) foods or ultra-processed foods (UPF), popularly called junk food.

  A new study has blamed Gujarat’s powerful milk cooperative sector, known across the country as Amul, for failing to take into cognisance the need to place under its wings urban area pastoralists, popularly known as Rabaris, involved mainly in selling cow milk to individual consumers. The study insists, that this, coupled with the lack of any policy on the part of the Gujarat government to “rehabilitate and modernise” the Rabaris’ business, has pushed the pastoralists to the margins of urban society.

  It was a pleasant surprise the other day. I received a phone call from Sohail Hashmi, who during my early college days initiated me into Left-wing student politics in Delhi University; the year was 1971. Sohail said he was in Ahmedabad. I asked him to come over. However, he told me he had come with an exhibition of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust ( Sahmat ) on creative expressions of artists on 75 years of India’s independence. So I should reach there at its inauguration. Organised at  Arthshila , a studio which claims to “facilitate artistic expression and curate creative experiences", situated next to the high-profile Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), I reached there to meet Sohail, whom I had not seen since mid-1970s, though would occasionally interact on phone (and sometimes on social media). On reaching there, sitting just outside the studio, he told me that in all Sahmat had collected 280 creative expressions, of which about 128 were on display at Arth...

Living in Vejalpur in Ahmedabad is a nightmate for middle classes during monsoon. The society where I live, Shrinandnagar Part 2, houses about 3000 people and has nearly 650 flats. It is society where an elected BJP corporator also lives. I went up on the terrace on Sunday morning to see if waters had receded somewhat after the heavy 6 inch rains that continued yesterday till midnight. They did not. I took a few photographs. Even eight hours after I took the photographs, things remained unchanged. I was told that the the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation had put up a facility last year to clear any such drain immediately. It appears that the facility which is supposed to pump water in the Sarkhej Roza lake failed to work.  Our society, as also Shrinandnagar Parts 1 and 3, where more people live than what they do here, are low lying. Built by Bakeri, known to be a "clean" builder, all these are in low lying. Some say a huge water body was recovered to bui...

Recently, I went with a small group of friends to the south of Ahmedabad. I was part of the team which was called to enjoy rural dinner. Previously an arid, the entire agricultural land in the area, I found, has been turned green. What a site, I thought, even as I was told by a farmer that they produce different vegetables. I found small trucks reaching the small farm house where we were to dine to upload several bundles of vegetables, including tomatoes, which are in the news for their high costs.  One of the farmers took us for a walk to the nearby areas. We stopped at a small eucalyptus forest, grown on the common grazing land. The farmer told us that this forest "was sucking away lot of underground water, which we should be using for agriculture." He explained, "This is the nature of the tree. Why has the forest department grown this forest is difficult to understand." As he kept on complaining, we took a few photographs of this small patch, which stood just nex...

  Testimonies at a public hearing in the wake of preparations for the G20 summit, where representatives from Mumbai, Kolkata, Nagpur, Indore, Udaipur, apart from different bastis in Delhi, have revealed "harrowing experiences of forced evictions", a report prepared by the organisers identifying themselves as Concerned Citizens of India has claimed.

  A new report, which has named five French banks and a pension fund for supporting Myanmar military junta, has blamed one of them, Crédit Agricole, for investing in India’s state-owned company Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) that has been implicated in the sale of military equipment to the Myanmar junta since the 2021 coup attempt. The  findings  by global NGOs Info Birmanie, BankTrack and Justice for Myanmar (JFM) have been published while France is  preparing to welcome  Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a guest of honour at the July 14th Bastille Day parade in Paris, as part of the celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of the France-India partnership. The report also notes that BEL is a leading partner of the Thalès Group group,too. A JFM  investigation  published earlier had revealed that one of Thales' long-time partners, BEL, has a particularly close relationship with the Myanmar junta, and exports military technology to it. A special se...

  Forbes India, an obvious subsidiary of Forbes, one of America's top business magazines, has clubbed India among pop 10 largest economies in the world in 2023, with India being the fifth largest. I was a little surprised when I read this. However, as a read through the  news story , my apprehensions appeared to be correct. First let me quote from the story itself. It says, "The United States of America, China, Japan, Germany, and India are the largest economies in the world in 2023, as per their GDP data. GDP serves as a key metric for assessing the magnitude of a nation's economy." It even describes the methodology of its calculation: "The conventional approach for gauging a country's GDP involves the expenditure method, wherein the total is derived by aggregating expenditure on fresh consumer goods, new investments, government outlays, and the net value of exports." It praises India in following words: "India's economy boasts diversity and sw...

Manu's statue in Rajasthan High Court premises Controversy has broken out around a Gujarat High Court judge asking the father of a pregnant teenage girl to read Manusmriti if he cares to find out when a girl gets pregnant. He said, the ancient treatise approvingly says that a girl can get pregnant at the age of 17, plus or minus a few months. Surely a very odd comment; however, some of the enthusiastic social media people -- mainly Modi haters -- made it an occasion to blame Gujarat for it. Identifying Gujarat with Modi is nothing new among some left-of-centre activists, even academics. Anything bad emanates from Gujarat, they seek to suggest. Often words like "Gujjus" are derogatorily used to criticise Gujarat. These people go so far as to say, this is the impact of eating dhoklas, surely a tasty Gujarati dish. Being a Gujarati myself, I think, such comments are parochial in nature. No doubt, some of the worst post-Independence communal riots took place in Gujarat -- in ...

A former Gujarat government official recently shared a tweet   by Subramaniam Swamy where a video shows Prime Minister Narendra Modi telling school children in his hometown Vadnagar that their face would glow if they perspire four times a day. He suggested his face was glowing exactly because of this reason. I have no idea whether facial glow is linked with how many times you perspire in a day, but what I know is, Modi would profusely avoid any perspiration when he was Gujarat chief minister. Thus, in 2006, Modi undertook a fast in support of the Narmada project, which he said the Centre was not supporting. The fast, it was declared, lasted for about 51 hours. I don't recall which month it was, but to avoid perspiration, he got installed air conditions in the open, just next to the spot where he and his colleagues were undertaking fast for the Narmada dam. When some enterprising journalists tried watching the ACs, they were manhandled -- for it would show his fast in poor light. S...

  A fact-finding report, prepared by the Mumbai-based non-profit, Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS), has cited the Vadodara Ram Navami violence of March 30 as yet another example of how, after the BJP consolidating its hold on political power in Gujarat post-2002 riots and at the Centre in 2014, the nature of communal riots has changed, underlining, as opposed to high-intensity violence earlier, now riots have become “more sub-radar and at a smaller scale, more localized”.

Campaign groups Ekō, India Civil Watch International (ICWI), and Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), referring to Meta’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), to be held on May 31, where vote on Proposal 7’s bears “significance for the Indian audience”, has said that its outcome is particularly important against the backdrop of allegations against

A report prepared by the top child welfare NGO, Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India (BPNI), has identified as many as 15 offenders allegedly violating the Indian baby food law, the Infant Milk Substitutes Feeding Bottles, and Infant Foods (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act 1992, and Amendment Act 2003 (IMS Act), stating, compliance with the law “seems to be dwindling by the day.” Launching its report on the occasion of the World Breastfeeding Protection Day, 21st May, BPNI says, “As media, especially social media, gains its strength over the years, there is unrelenting promotion of the products under the scope of this law. Celebrities have joined the businesses to promote baby foods, which are not only ultra-processed food products and mostly high in sugar which makes it inherently harmful and they end up displacing the precious protector the mother’s milk.” Noting that “undermining breastfeeding and complementary feeding through commercial influence also vio...

  Even as welcoming the Supreme Court  order  to provide ration cards to eight crore migrant/ unorganised workers, the civil rights organisation Right to Food Campaign (RFC) has expressed the apprehension that an estimated about 10 crore of them would still be left out. In a statement, RFC indicated, the Apex Court order only pertains to eight crore migrant/  unorganised sector workers who are registered on the eShram portal "but do not possess a ration card."

Several environmental activists, social workers and academics, most of them belonging to the arid Kutch district of Gujarat, have sought Gujarat authorities’ urgent intervention to “notify, protect, restore and rejuvenate” lakes of the historic Bhuj city, threatening legal action in case they fail to do it. Those who have  signed  a letter, which has been shot to local as well as Gujarat government and Government of India officials, are led by Bhuj-based architect and environmentalist Sandeep Virmani, who is closely associated with Ahmedabad-based NGO Centre for Social Justice.  Supported by top Vadodara-based environmentalist Rohit Prajapati, others signatories include  former Bhuj mayor Arun Vacchrajani, NGO Hunnarshala Foundation executive director Mahavir Acharya, Manishaba Jadeja of the NGO Arid Communities and Technologies, Malshree Gadhvi of the NGO Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan, local journalists, social workers, architects, researchers and activists. Suggesti...

  Even as the Supreme Court begins hearings in front of a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud on “marriage equality”, and the Bar Council of India (BCI) requesting the Apex Court to  leave the issue  for “legislative consideration” i.e., to Parliament, as the hearing would be treated as being against the culture and social religious ethos, a civil society report has insisted that “queer and transgender persons ought to be given the right to have a chosen family not defined by marriage, birth or adoption alone.” Based on a closed door testimony of 31 persons – 23 of them Hindus – the  report , "Apnon ka Bahut Lagta Hai (Our Own Hurt Us the Most)”, published by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties PUCL and the National Network of LBI (Lesbian, Bisexual, Intersex) Women and Transpersons, explores the lives of queer and trans persons amidst continued invocation of ‘sanskar’ (morality) by the state in defence of heterosexual mar...

  Amidst raging controversy over the top children's product Bournvita's allegedly misleading information on claims of "improved brain activity, improved muscles, improved immune system and improved bone health", a spokesperson of the Cadbury's one of the most well-known brands has said, over the last seven decades it "has earned the trust of consumers in India."

  In a surprise revelation, which may send shock wave among those who consider agitations as a democratic right and believe this right is being eroded by the powers-that-be, nearly 95 percent of the respondents in a recent survey in Gujarat have justified the government’s use of CCTV as a means to control political movements of all sorts.

  A recent study has revealed that India’s marginalised and economically weak are consuming high quantities of ultra-processed and packaged food. In a country that faces one of the world’s gravest double burden of malnutrition, the lowest income quintile has gone from facing hunger to relying on unhealthy snacks.

 In an unusual move, a US-based non-profit, Justice for All, has released a report to “explain” how the BJP-RSS are seeking to establish the ideology of Hindu supremacy called Hindutva in an effort to draw inspiration from Nazi ideologies, resulting in what calls “Nazification of India.”